CBI raid on 110 locations: Mayawati, Hooda under radar

New Delhi | The CBI on Tuesday searched premises of the former secretary to ex-Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati in connection with a probe into the sugar mills disinvestment scam case as also several other locations across the country in separate cases, officials said.

The searches in the disinvestment scam case, which allegedly took place during the BSP rule in UP, were conducted at 14 locations in Lucknow and NCR.

The properties of former IAS officers Netram and Vinay Priya Dubey and premises of former MLC Iqbal Singh’s sons — Wajid Ali and Mohammed Javed — were searched.

Netram had held the position of secretary to Mayawati for some period when she was the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh between 2007 and 2012, while Dubey was the managing director of Uttar Pradesh State Sugar Corporation, they said.

The premises of a chartered accountant at Barakhamba Road in New Delhi and another person in UP’s Saharanpur were also searched in connection with the disinvestment scam case.

During the searches, the agency recovered cash worth Rs 11 lakh, they said.

The agency had registered an FIR and six preliminary inquiries to probe the disinvestment scam case pertaining to the sale of 10 running and 11 closed sugar mills of the state government.

Days before this year’s Lok Sabha polls, the Income Tax Department had searched Netram’s properties where it claimed to have recovered huge wealth.

The searches in the disinvestment scam case were part of a coordinated search operation carried out by around 500 officials of the agency at 110 locations across 19 states and Union Territories, they said.

This is the second massive search operation conducted by the agency in a week. A similar operation was carried out last Tuesday against banking fraud accused.

The search operation pertained to about 30 FIRs registered by the agency at various points of time related to criminal misconduct, corruption and cheating, among others.

The CBI also conducted searches at the office of Krrish Buildtech in New Delhi’s Jasola and its name had figured in a probe against former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.

The agency also searched 11 premises in Munirka, Krishna Nagar, Laxmi Nagar, Nirman Vihar, Sahibabad, Ghaziabad, Dwarka, Pitampura and Turkman Gate in Delhi and NCR in connection with its FIR against alleged corporate lobbyist Deepak Talwar and his company Advantage India as part of its operation.

Several private gun houses in Udhampur and Srinagar, and 11 locations in Jammu were searched after the agency registered two cases related to illegal issuance of arms licenses by officials of the Jammu and Kashmir government on mass scale.

The licenses were allegedly issued on the basis of forged documents for illicit monetary considerations by the officials, they said.

The premises of a branch manager of the Punjab National Bank, Meerut Road branch in Ghaziabad and Bulandshahr were searched by the agency for allowing exchange of demonetised currency notes worth Rs 58 lakh, they said.

Three customs officers Kunal Anuj (IRS), Sharad Ranjan and Kamleshwar Singh who held the position of deputy commissioner of customs in Nhava Sheva port terminal between March 2017 and April 2018 have been booked by the agency.

They allegedly facilitated illegal disbursal of duty draw back amounts of various exporters which were kept on hold because of an ongoing investigation against them.

The agency carried out searches at 28 locations in Maharashtra, including Mumbai, in connection with these three FIRs.

The premises of K A Duggal, the then CMD, British India Corporation Limited, Kanpur, company secretary K V Vajpayee are being searched for alleged irregularities in tendering process while selling the properties of BICL.

The cases in which search operations are going on also include cheating of a Mumbai-based businessman who was sold 980 acres of land worth Rs 11 crore in Chhindwara district of Madhya Pradesh on the basis of forged documents.

The CBI has taken over the investigation on the orders of the Madhya Pradesh High Court.

The cases also include that of a missing woman from Jaipur in Rajasthan, disbursal of 13 housing loans worth Rs 3 crore by an SBI branch manager in Haridwar.

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